Oriented polymeric monofilament is widely used as fishline. For this application, it has been found important to balance several properties in a monofilament that are important in its use as a fishline. These include tensile strength, shock strength, abrasion resistance, knot strength, limpness, stretch and visibility. Over the years, significant improvements have been made to one or more of these characteristics, as indicated, for example, in U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,156,750 and 3,595,952.
Despite the improvements that have been made in monofilament fishline, a continuing difficulty is the balance between hook setting ability and castability. A responsive line, and one having good hook setting performance, is generally characterized by a low stretch and high tensile strength. However, with increasing stiffness and reduced stretch, the castability of the monofilament fishline decreases. Accordingly, it has previously been difficult to obtain excellent performance in both of these seemingly inconsistent properties.